The encoding of neural responses can change according to an animal’s behavioral state. Horrocks, Rodrigues and Saleem assessed the sub-second dynamics of visual cortical responses while mice were either stationary or running. Interestingly, single-neuron temporal dynamics were more sustained, and visual speed tuning started earlier and lasted longer, during locomotion. At the population level, changes in pairwise neural correlations increased the stimulus encoding capacity, and the structure of these correlations and visual speed decoding stabilized more quickly during locomotion. The authors further analyzed the dynamics of neural population trajectories, and, intriguingly, these were more direct, less oscillatory and less tangled during locomotion than during stationary trials. These more divergent population trajectory dynamics improved visual speed encoding. These findings reveal that the brain can modify the temporal dynamics of neural responses depending on the current behavioral state.

Original reference: Nat. Commun. 15, 6415 (2024)

神经反应的编码可以根据动物的行为状态而改变。霍罗克斯、罗德里格斯和萨利姆评估了小鼠静止或奔跑时视觉皮层反应的亚秒动态。有趣的是，在运动过程中，单神经元时间动力学更加持续，视觉速度调节开始得更早，持续时间更长。在群体水平上，成对神经相关性的变化增加了刺激编码能力，并且这些相关性的结构和视觉速度解码在运动过程中更快地稳定下来。作者进一步分析了神经群体轨迹的动态，有趣的是，与静止试验相比，在运动过程中这些轨迹更直接、更少振荡、更少缠结。这些更加不同的群体轨迹动态提高了视觉速度编码。这些发现表明，大脑可以根据当前的行为状态改变神经反应的时间动态。

原文参考： Nat.交流。 15 , 6415 (2024)